Friday, March 11, 2005
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

Pattison accused of faking schizophrenia

Deliberations expected to begin this morning in 2001 slayings of three people

Dante Pattison is faking schizophrenia to provide an excuse for killing his family during a drug-induced psychosis, a prosecutor said Thursday.

"He is malingering," prosecutor Marc DiGiacomo said during closing arguments of Pattison's capital murder trial.

"To a reasonable degree of medical certainty, he does not have schizophrenia."

But Pattison's defense attorney, Wil Ewing, said Pattison is mentally ill, and a jury should therefore find him not guilty by reason of insanity for the Feb. 24, 2001, shootings of his sister and grandparents.

"If someone is having delusions, they are not premeditating," Ewing said. "They are not deliberating. There is evidence that Dante wasn't capable of any rational thought on Feb. 24, 2001."

The jury in Pattison's trial is expected to begin deliberations this morning. If convicted of first-degree murder, the 25-year-old could be sentenced to death.

Pattison, according to authorities, used an assault rifle to kill his pregnant sister, Carrie Pattison-Adrick, 32; his grandmother, Sally Kato, 75; and her husband, Yoshio Kato, 82, in his grandparents' home near Vegas and Torrey Pines drives. Defense attorneys contend that Pattison was a schizophrenic who believed his loved ones were assassins out to kill him.

Prosecutors say he was psychotic because of prolonged, extensive use of methamphetamine.

Pattison's sister had methamphetamine in her system, and other witnesses have said Pattison was a regular user of the drug.

Speaking during closing arguments Thursday, DiGiacomo pointed to Pattison's actions on the night of the slayings to show that the murders were calculated.

For instance, after Pattison shot his sister during a struggle over the gun in a bedroom, he said the evidence indicates that Pattison put the gun to her head and shot her again as she laid face-down on the ground.

"What could his possible delusion be to put an execution wound into the back of her head?" the prosecutor said.

He said a purse belonging to Pattison's aunt, who escaped the house unharmed, was found overturned in a nearby bedroom.

This, the prosecutor suggested, was an indication that Pattison was searching for the aunt's car keys to flee the scene.

DiGiacomo said there was then an extended period of time that unfolded before Pattison shot his grandmother as she was on the phone with a 911 operator. He shot his grandmother, the prosecutor said, only after Kato identified Pattison as the killer and started to spell Pattison's name to a dispatcher.

"D-A-N-T-E P-A-T-T-I-S-O-Boom!" DiGiacomo said of the contents of Kato's 911 call, which was played for the jury.

Once the first shot echoed out on the 911 tape, it took five seconds for Pattison to shoot his grandmother again in the head as she was on the ground, the prosecutor said. A crime-scene photo shown to the jury Thursday showed Kato dead on her back, the phone still in her hand.

Pattison turned the gun on his grandfather next, then put the gun down and surrendered to police when they showed up at the front doorstep of the home.

"Suddenly, his delusion is over," DiGiacomo said. "There he is. The most lucid defendant."

DiGiacomo said that during Pattison's lengthy stay at Lakes Crossing, a state facility in Northern Nevada for the mentally ill charged with a crime, Pattison acted like a prankster and not a schizophrenic. In one instance, Pattison took off all his clothes, ran through the Lakes Crossing facility and jumped in a garbage can.

Doctors at Lakes Crossing said such behavior is not consistent with the traditionally withdrawn and suspicious behavior of schizophrenics.

"Frat boy antics," DiGiacomo said, suggesting that Pattison learned from other patients at Lakes Crossing how to fake mental illness.

"This guy went to the college for the legally insane," DiGiacomo said.

But Ewing said prosecutors do not have toxicology results or any other evidence to prove Pattison was using methamphetamine on the night of the slayings.

"Do you have a tox screen?" Ewing said. "No. Did anyone see him use meth? No. Did police find meth in the bedroom? No."